


Midnight Train

by theskywasblue



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon, Romance, Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-10
Updated: 2014-01-10
Packaged: 2018-01-08 06:10:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1129251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theskywasblue/pseuds/theskywasblue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur and Eames, a romance by travel delays.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Midnight Train

**Author's Note:**

> this one's for [](http://kansouame.dreamwidth.org/profile)[](http://kansouame.dreamwidth.org/)**kansouame** , who had a recent travel delay of her own, though probably didn't enjoy it quite as much. (I'm sorry about the Journey reference by the way.)

The departures board was a sea of red. Arthur stood, staring up at the rows upon rows of lights, counting off the flight numbers, looking for even the smallest glimmer of hope, the thinnest chance that he might make it out of the airport before sometime next year - but there was nothing. No planes had landed in hours, no planes were scheduled to take off. Outside, the runways were nothing but vast fields of snow and shallowly-blinking safety lights in the darkness.

The airport was overflowing with stranded travelers, the air buzzing with a dull unhappiness. Arthur wandered up and down the terminal, trying to find somewhere to sit, but every bench, every scrap of floor was occupied. There were kids riding back and forth on the automated walkways, parents wandering circles around the chairs at the gates trying to calm fussy babies, backpackers crashed next to garbage cans, using their backpacks as pillows, and old ladies napping on lounge couches. The airport was at a standstill, and Arthur just wanted to go home. The job had been a long and irritating one; and even though it had ultimately been a success, Arthur wouldn’t be able to put it completely out of his mind until he’d had time to decompress, which he certainly could not do, stranded in the airport.

Eventually, he shuffled into line at one of the coffee kiosks. If he couldn’t find a place to sit down, he was going to need caffeine to keep him on his feet. He was standing with his eyes closed, trying to will away the headache that was blossoming just above his left eyebrow, when someone grabbed him by the wrist.

“Arthur?”

Arthur’s eyes snapped open, and he took a step back that almost had him knocking over a very angry-looking German tourist.

_“Passen Sie doch auf!”_ The man snarled, moving to shove Arthur back. Eames cut in between them, raising his hands in a placating gesture.

_”Verzeihung, bitte,”_ he said. _”Das ist ein Notfall.”_

The man gave them both an ugly glare, but went back to his place in line without complaint. Arthur was feeling a little less generous.

“What the hell are you doing here? I thought you left last night.”

Eames laughed nervously. He looked the same as when Arthur had last seen him almost twenty-four hours earlier - though his clothes were more wrinkled, and he was in need of a shave. “Yes, well - you see, there was a bit of trouble with my paperwork, and by the time I got it all sorted out…”

Only Eames, Arthur thought, disparagingly. It was always a minor miracle to find that he wasn’t in a jail cell somewhere. Eames tugged on Arthur’s arm again, flashing him a dangerous grin.

“Listen, darling - would you like to get out of here?”

Arthur floundered for a moment. If he’d been at full mental capacity, he would have had some sharply-barbed comeback for that; though, truthfully, he had heard worse come-ons, particularly from Eames.

“I mean that seriously,” Eames continued, without waiting for Arthur to respond. He leaned in close, until Arthur could smell the fading traces of his cologne and almost feel the scratch of whiskers against his cheek. “There’s a train leaving the station in fifty-three minutes, according to a very nice woman I just spoke to on the phone.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I would never.”

Arthur stepped out of the coffee line and it closed up behind him like he’d never been there. “What the hell are we standing around here for, then?”

They must have looked like madmen, sprinting down the terminal. There was no time for Arthur to attempt to get the money for his ticket back or to worry about his checked baggage; but Arthur had flown often enough that he never checked anything he could carry-on, and definitely never checked something he couldn’t live without, so he barely even thought about it. Outside the terminal, there were dozens of taxis idling and they scrambled into the nearest one. Eames gave the driver an obscene amount of money, promising him even more if he could get them to the station “quickly and alive.”

Arthur dug his fingers into the leather seat and strained to see out the frost-covered window.

“We’re never going to make it,” he muttered, bouncing one knee anxiously as the traffic crawled along ahead of them. On a good night, it might have taken twenty minutes to get to the train station - but this was not a good night by any stretch of the imagination.

“Come now, Arthur - have a little faith. We’ll get there” But Eames was as anxious as he was, the glow of the car lights painting strange shadows along his stubbled jaw as it clenched and unclenched.

About halfway there, when it got to be too much for both of them, they abandoned the cab at a red light and ran through the snow on foot. Arthur had to catch Eames twice to keep him from slipping on the ice; once, he almost knocked his teeth out on a mail box.

They arrived at the station ten minutes late, but the train was still on the platform.

“Mechanical problems,” the woman at the ticket counter explained. “It could be a while yet before the train leaves.’

“We’re in no hurry, love,” Eames promised her as he shook snow out of his hair with one hand and took his ticket with the other. “It’s the journey, not the destination.”

“Please,” Arthur snorted, elbowing Eames out of the way. “He’s ridiculous. Don’t pay any attention to him.”

The woman just laughed, like she thought Eames was charming.

They boarded, and found themselves seats in a surprisingly empty passenger car. Arthur must have dozed off the moment he sat down, because he was jolted awake when the train finally got moving, and when he glanced at his watch, almost an hour had passed. The snow was still falling outside, and Eames’ seat was empty. Arthur got up, stretching out his stiff legs, and went to find him.

He was in the lounge car, of course, enjoying a drink and rolling his poker chip back and forth across his knuckles, wearing an expression that said there was nothing in the world he would rather be doing, right at that moment. Arthur ordered a coffee, and took the empty seat across from him.

“When did you learn German?” He asked.

Eames looked over at him, smirking. “Why? Would you like me to teach you?”

“Let me guess - it was after the Braunstein job.”

The way Eames laughed, Arthur knew he’d got him. “Well, I couldn’t quite get along knowing only _Ich brauche einen Arzt_ could I? Though the hospital in Hamburg had a number of good-looking ones.”

“I bet it did.” He wondered what the scar looked like, and if Eames had had a chance to cover it up with a new tattoo yet, or if he was waiting for it to fade a bit more. Arthur had hear about the job going wrong from Reid, who had heard it from Natalia; and by then, Eames had probably already been fluent in German, and in German doctors.

“Funny,” Eames remarked, apropos of nothing. “All these years I’ve been trying to get you to run away with me, and all it took was a little inclement weather to get you keen on the idea.”

“I would hardly call this -” Arthur jabbed his finger at the window; the closer he got, the more he could feel a chill radiating off it. “A _little_ inclement weather, Eames.”

“Nevertheless…”

Arthur cut him off, “And when have you ever tried to get me to run away with you?”

“Prague,” Eames responded, without a moment’s hesitation.

Arthur had worked a few jobs in Prague, but only one with Eames - and it had been an absolute disaster. First, their extractor had dropped out, unavoidably, due to a death in the family. While they were still in the middle of trying to replace her, the heat in the team’s rented house had completely crapped out. As a result, their architect caught pneumonia; and then their employer had been jailed for tax evasion and the entire job had to be summarily scrapped.

Arthur and Eames had ended up alone in a frozen house, once the chemist had packed her bags and headed home to Hong Kong, sharing a small bed and a lot of cheap wine, finding creative ways to stay warm.

“You invited me to join you on a _job_ in Budapest,” Arthur reminded him, though the recollection was a little hazy. He had been sucking Eames’ cock at the time, so he hadn’t been paying complete attention. “Not exactly romantic.”

Eames clucked his tongue. “There was also that time in Chile.”

Eames spun one finger thoughtfully around the rim of his glass, eyes on the table. Arthur waited to see what other stories he would put together. He was sure that they had never actually been in Chile at the same time; Eames had to be thinking of someone else.

Finally, Eames looked up at him and said, “There was also New York.”

Arthur felt a slow, cold stab of guilt. “Eames - you know I couldn’t…”

“Of course not,” he nodded magnanimously. “Cobb needed you.”

“He _did_.”

“I know.”

They both went quiet. Someone at the other end of the car laughed.

“You’re still mad at me,” Arthur said, barely holding back an indignant noise. “Three years -”

“I’m not,” Eames responded quickly, cutting him off. “I swear I’m not.”

One of Arthur’s biggest problems was that he was really able to tell when Eames was lying; especially if there was a particular truth that he preferred.

“I invited you back to my hotel in Los Angeles, too, if you recall.” Eames continued. He lifted his glass, but put it back down when he realized it was empty.

Arthur had to laugh. “Because you wanted to fuck me. I wasn’t about to be that easy.”

“Arthur, Arthur, Arthur.” Eames sighed, shaking his head. “Trust me, you were never easy.”

“I’m oddly flattered, Eames.”

“I always want what doesn’t come easily.”

“Is that a joke?”

“No,” Eames answered, though he was smirking when he said it. “But I do want you more than anything.”

It was an awful line. Frankly, everything about Eames was awful on some level - from his fashion sense to his tattoos, his spelling, his taste in music - and if he could do it all again, Arthur would have still chosen to go with Dom, because that’s just the sort of person that he was; but he would have regretted it twice as much.

“You realize that I got on this train with you without ever asking where it was going, right?” Arthur drained the last of his coffee from the cup, licking his lips.

Eames shrugged. “I thought you would rather go anywhere than be trapped in that airport another minute.”

That was true, but still…

“It’s the journey, not the destination, Mr. Eames.”

Arthur stood in his seat, just enough to stretch himself across the table and press a soft kiss to Eames’ mouth.

“Cheeky bugger,” Eames muttered, shifting forward in his seat, unconsciously chasing after Arthur as he moved away. “You’re just determined to do everything by your schedule instead of mine.”

Arthur snorted. “Do you even keep a schedule?”

“I do try,” Eames insisted. Then, he paused and glanced around the car, before dropping his voice to a whisper. “You don’t suppose we could find an empty sleeper car somewhere…”

“We could try - “

They drew a couple of stares as they left the lounge car, hurrying while trying not to _look_ like they were hurrying. At one point, Arthur had to stop and hiss at Eames to stop grabbing his ass, while they peeked into one sleeper car after another. The best they could find was one with only a single occupied bunk, it’s occupant snoring loudly and possibly more than a bit drunk, judging by the empty bottles on the small table beneath the window.

“You’re insane,” Arthur told him, as Eames crowded him into the compartment, then turned and did something to the lock. “What if he wakes up?”

Eames grinned wildly. “Well - the quieter you can be, the less likely that is to happen, hmm?”

Except, sitting on the bottom bunk with his shirt unbuttoned, his pants open, and Eames between his thighs, Arthur had a better chance of sprouting wings than staying quiet. He stuffed the ball of his thumb into his mouth and groaned around it as Eames sucked down the length of his cock. If he made any noise after that, he didn’t hear it; the blood was rushing too loudly in his ears; though he definitely heard the sound Eames made - a full, deep hum of pleasure - when Arthur scraped the nails of his free hand against Eames’ scalp.

There might have been some hope, if Eames hadn’t been so completely ruthless, digging his fingertips into Arthur’s trembling thighs and all but trying to swallow him, until Arthur had his head thrown back and perfect indentations of his teeth in the flesh of his hand.

As Eames pulled himself up from the floor, climbing up to straddle Arthur’s lap, hands working at his own zipper as they shared a messy kiss, the train gave a very distinct lurch, and the lights beyond the curtained window in the door of the sleeper car went out.

“This ‘running away together’ plan is much more complicated than I thought it would be,” Eames said, as Arthur glared at his obviously grinning face, and the man on the top bunk snored away, oblivious. “Considering we can’t even find a reliable method of transportation. Perhaps I should have rented us a sleigh or something.”

Arthur grabbed a handful of Eames’ shirt and held him in close so he could bite at his lower lip. “We’ll get there,” he muttered. “We’ll get there.”

-End-


End file.
